Pages

Friday, February 27, 2015

Twenty-four
days after Archbishop Romero was recognized as a martyr, the Church has not yet
set a date for his beatification. This week was a one of motions without
movement—closed door meetings, press releases and blaring headlines, all saying
nothing not already known.

Detecting the
suspense created by the lack of news, the Salvadoran Church officially
confirmed some of the details that have already been leaked.

·At
the end of last week, the Salvadoran Bishops’ Conference (CEDES for its Spanish
acronym) confirmed that the ceremony will be held at the Plaza of the Americas
(aka Divine Savior of the World: photo).

·More
recently, the Salvadoran press reported the purported confirmation by the
Vatican that the ceremony will be presided by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of
the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (CCS).

·In
the same article, it was reported that the Vatican had reiterated that “the beatification event will be soon.”

On Wednesday,
the Salvadoran President convoked a meeting of the government-church coordinating
commission, and it convened without announcing any specifics. Speaking of
commissions, in confirming the location for the ceremony, the Church also
reported the formation of three church commissions to coordinate the event from
the Church’s standpoint.

This weekend
can clear some doubts. First, there will be elections in El Salvador for mayors
and legislators Sunday. It is possible that the authorities have wanted to wait
until after these to avoid politicization of the issue. Second, the Pope and
the Roman Curia (including the Prefect of the CCS and the postulator of the
Romero cause) have been on a spiritual retreat all week and they will emerge
this weekend.

If the
announcement of the beatification date for Archbishop Romero comes after Monday,
we will be in the strange situation that the process for fixing the date will
have taken longer than it took the cardinals and bishops of the CCS to ratify
the theologians’ vote recognizing Romero’s martyrdom.

Super Martyrio will continue to monitor developments
and provide an update every Friday regarding plans for the beatification, as
well as for commemorations of Romero's anniversary in March—in a little over three
weeks!

Friday, February 20, 2015

As we near
the end of the month in which Archbishop Óscar A. Romero was recognized as a martyr and thus,
made eligible for beatification, no date has yet been announced for his
beatification ceremony.The delay is not
seen as anything but a logistical hold-up and the announcement is expected to
come soon.(In fact, the Vatican did
announce this week the dates for the beatification of the Peruvian churchmen
whose martyrdom was approved on the same day that Romero’s martyrdom was
approved.)

As time goes
by, it seems less likely that the Romero beatification date will coincide with
the 35th anniversary of Romero’s martyrdom (March 24—now, too soon) or Romero’s
birthday (August 15—too far off and, worse, in the middle of Rome’s
end-of-summer hiatus).If the
authorities were looking for another date with some significance, they might
consider one that appears to fall within the planning “sweet spot” and has
significance that Archbishop Romero himself might have approved.Sunday June 21, the date of the summer
solstice, will also mark the 45 anniversary of Romero’s episcopal ordination in
1970.Romero’s elevation to the
episcopate was organized by his friend Fr. Rutilio Grande, who was killed
shortly after Romero was named Archbishop in 1977, and whose beatification
cause was recently opened (photo).

Romero picked
June 21st for the ceremony in which he was ordained a bishop because of his
devotion to the Virgin Queen of Peace, the Patroness of his native San Miguel,
whose feast day is November 21, which Romero remembered every month of the
year.Five years later, the date would
figure prominently again in Romero’s life when, on June 21, 1975, the
Salvadoran army committed a peasant massacre at a hamlet called Las
Tres Calles, in
Romero’s rural diocese of Santiago de María.The incident triggered an awakening in Romero to the brutal reality of
peasant life in El Salvador, which flourished more fully when he was
archbishop.June 21 was also the date of
Romero’s last audience with Pope Bl. Paul VI, which he recalled fondly in a pastoral letter.Paul, Romero wrote, “confirmed our
episcopal service when, on that unforgettable June 21, he spoke to us with the tenderness
of a father [who] was already aware
of the approach of death” (the Pope passed away the following August 6).

Super Martyrio will continue to monitor developments
and provide an update every Friday regarding plans for the beatification, as
well as for commemorations of Romero's anniversary in March and his birthday in
August.And when there is no news to
report (like this week), I will console you with miscellaneous musings to pass
the time while we await real developments!

Sunday, February 15, 2015

I barely met Archbishop
Romero. As in the old “Ben-Hur” movies, where the heroes have a chance
encounter with Jesus Christ in a melodramatic scene that has little to do with
the plot of the movie, I brushed up against Monseñor in brief and transient episodes in my childhood. But
someday, if God permits me, I will attest to generations who never saw him, that
I did see him, even if I barely managed to do so.

Our coincidence
in this “vale of tears” was a blink of an eye. When I was born in 1968, Monseñor had just over eleven years left
of his pilgrimage through this earth. And when he became Archbishop of San
Salvador, which was the first time he registered in my awareness, I only had
year and a half left in the country. But he made a great impact, right from the
start.

I vividly
remember the first time I saw his picture, in black and white, in “El Diario De Hoy” (a Salvadoran paper)
in 1977, when he was named Archbishop of San Salvador. I read the interview,
and I followed his first dramatic steps on the radio, hearing his impressive
Sunday homilies, along with the rest of the country. My grandmother who raised
me would take me to cathedral for the most important dates in the liturgical
calendar, such as Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of the Transfiguration to
see the “Savior of the World” (Jesus, El Salvador’s patron).

It was in this
context that witnessed his prophetic ministry in the culminating moments of his
public ministry. It was in 1977 that they killed Father Rutilio Grande, and
Father Alfonso Navarro a few months later. I remember going to the Cathedral on
Holy Saturday one year, and watching a Boy Scouts bonfire in Plaza Barrios in
front of the church. I remember watching Romero and some of his priests in a procession
around the inside of the cathedral, perfuming the temple with incense and
sprinkling holy water while the congregation sang, “The Lord is risen/Risen is the Lord.” I remember seeing trucks full
of soldiers around the square and thinking they were there to participate in
the Mass, perhaps providing protection to the flock of the faithful. It never
occurred to me in my nine years of age that their presence could be more
sinister.

But my dearest and
most sacrosanct memories of Archbishop Romero were more intimate encounters,
although they were all passing moments. Three episodes take precedence over all
others, and are etched in my memory forever. Once Archbishop Romero entered,
without advance notice, a Mass I attended with my grandmother in the now-disappeared
Church of San Esteban (St. Stephen’s),
in the district of the same name (this temple was consumed by fire in January
2013). Since the Mass had begun, he was announced by bullhorn from the back of
the church, where as I remember, he was delivered by car. He walked down the
main aisle of the church, with a green chasuble and his bishop's miter,
blessing and greeting those present, and passing directly in front of me. For a
moment, we saw eye-to-eye. Although it was over in a flash, it made a lasting
impression because St. Stephen was the first martyr of Christianity. To me it
was like a sign and a blessing to have lived this coincidence.

On another
occasion, my grandmother and I had attended Mass at the Cathedral, and upon
exiting the church, we saw that Archbishop Romero was greeting people on the front
steps, before Plaza Barrios. Taking advantage of a small opening in the crowds
around him, at a moment when there was no one there, my grandmother came to him
and knelt before him to kiss his ring. He crowned her with his pontifical
blessing. Being a little shy, I did not come too close, preferring to
appreciate this beatific image from the sidelines. For me, my grandmother and
Romero have been my spiritual parents, and this images figures for me like a
family portrait.

The third
meeting is the most intimate, but in some ways, the most ineffable and elusive
one. We were again at the Cathedral, possibly the same Holy Saturday discussed before.
I walked into a confessional. The details are blurry, a mystery that melts into
the mysticism and spirituality of the moment to make that episode into
something beyond history and time. Yet upon hearing that unmistakable voice, I
was left with the undeniable certainty that Archbishop Romero was my confessor!
I remember being struck by the lack of formality of his questions, and the lack
of austerity in his style of addressing me: Instead of reciting the repetitive
phrases of a formal confession, he asked me what parish I was from, and other
things that were not strictly part of an obligatory or customary examination of
conscience. Although I was sure that it was him, I take a certain delight in
being able to doubt if it really was—because it adds to the mystique of the
moment, and to the supernatural persistence of his presence in our lives. Archbishop
Romero was a spiritual being whose presence in history cannot be accounted for with
the sterile rules of science, or political science, or social theology. He was
a spiritual force, like the shadow of God hovering over the land.

I do not want
to pretend that these episodes were anything other than casual encounters:
ephemeral and passing. It truly is very likely that Archbishop Romero did not
notice me. Indeed, my goal in recounting them is to say that I noticed him. By a happy accident of
history, I have brushed up against this historical figure, and the grace of bearing
witness to his existence challenges me to also bear witness to his cause.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

The following is a theological
reflection by Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD, of The Martyrs Project,* in an exclusive
for Super Martyrio.

(*Please read to the end of this post, then play The Project's video “Romero.”)

In the course
of this last week, beginning with the promulgation of the papal decree that
Archbishop Oscar Romero was indeed a martyr, having been killed owing to a
“hatred of the faith” (odium fidei), I have tried to take some time to reflect
on what that might actually mean in terms of the Church and its relationship
with society as a whole.It is clear in
the documentation compiled by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the
“Positio”, that Mons. Romero was
killed by those who were antagonistic towards the Church and its teachings as a
whole.What would become a full blown
civil war in El Salvador was already in its early stages. Violence was rampant.
People were already taking sides in the struggle between the political left and
the political right in the cities and in the countryside. The right in El
Salvador sought the maintenance of the status quo in the imposition of “order”, while the left sought a measure
of social and economic justice in order to bridge the enormous gap between
wealth and poverty in the country.Added
to this already volatile mixture was the policy of the US government and its
stated policy of opposing what was seen in Washington as a “communist takeover” of Central
America.In the midst of this turmoil
was the Church.

With parishes
in both urban and rural areas, initially there were probably as many opinions
regarding the political and economic situation in El Salvador as there were
priests, religious and bishops.Many, if
not entirely comfortable with the status quo, were at least willing to
cooperate with the ruling faction and wait for a gradual and evolutionary
change in the country.Others, often in
intellectual enclaves such as UCA (the Jesuit-run university in San Salvador),
had begun to embrace certain tenets of liberation theology and the concept of
God’s preferential option towards the poor.Still others were pragmatists, in the best sense of the word, doing what
they could at any given moment for their parishioners and others under their
pastoral care.Nevertheless, in those
years previous to Mons. Romero’s killing in 1980, the situation had become
increasingly polarized.As some elements
within the El Salvadoran military became more repressive toward the population
as a whole—and the Church in particular, even to the extent of coining the
phrase, “Be a patriot, kill a priest”—many
in the Church began to advocate for swifter changes in society and the economic
structure.

It was within
this context that Mons. Romero assumed his position as Archbishop of San Salvador.Much has been written about Romero as a man,
a priest and a bishop.Much has been
written about the death of his friend Rutilio Grande, SJ, and the change that
took place in Romero’s conduct and public pronouncements. Now, however,
following the decree of Pope Francis, declaring Mons. Romero a martyr owing to
a “hatred of the faith”, we must, I
believe, view him through yet another lens, one that may have an impact upon
our understanding of the Gospel itself.

Like
other priests in Latin America in those years, he was the victim of an
oligarchic system formed by people who professed themselves Catholic and saw in
him an enemy of Western social order and of what already Pius XI, in «Quadragesimo Anno» terms 'economic
dictatorship'.

Clearly,
Mons. Romero spoke out concerning economic injustice, as much as he spoke out
about those who had been killed or those who had disappeared, both in pastoral
and public pronouncements.Additionally,
Romero spoke out against the repression promulgated by the military and the
killing of civilians, perhaps most famously in his final homily the day before
he was killed.

To some, in
the past, before this last week, Romero’s words might have been considered
controversial, perhaps even theologically suspect. They did not seem to fit
into the “normal” homiletic exercises expected of the head pastor of a troubled
archdiocese. Some, indeed, might have wondered why he was addressing his
remarks to the whole of Salvadoran society instead of keeping such remarks
within the confines of the Church. He was clearly, in some sense, breaking new
ground. One might say that in addition to being “the voice of the voiceless”, he became the awakened conscience of
the nation. While we might find similarities in figures such as Thomas Becket
in the England of Henry II or Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Hitler’s Germany, Romero
stands as a unique figure in our time, one not easily categorized nor one
easily claimed by any particular faction, either within the Church or
society.Yet, I believe, that Romero was
convinced that he was not only speaking to the people of El Salvador, but that
he was also speaking on behalf of the people of El Salvador—the whole people of
El Salvador.Owing to this, his words
have a universal meaning, a meaning that transcends his death and still speaks
to us today.They speak to us in comfort
and they speak in conviction. They speak to us concerning our spiritual lives
and they speak to us of those injustices which we see in our own society today
that still cry out to be addressed by people of faith. Owing to this, we face
the same questions about Romero that the pontifical commissions had to address.
They are questions of faith and of justice.

Now, however,
we are told by those who compiled the “Positio”
that, in all essentials, Mons. Romero was faithful to what the Church proclaims
in her teaching.This is
remarkable.I believe that this means
that we have to look at the life and death of Oscar Romero, Rutilio Grande, the
Maryknoll Sisters, the Jesuits at UCA and indeed the Gospel itself, through a “new lens”.When we look through that new lens what we
will see that what was affirmed and, indeed, what was set in stone this last
week, is that justice is at the heart and core of the Gospel we are called to
proclaim. As we grasp that new vision, we will join with martyrs, literally as
witnesses, to that Gospel for which Romero and so many others have died. It is
reported that before his death, Romero said that if he was killed, he would
rise again in the people of El Salvador.As much as I honor and revere Monseñor
Romero, I believe, if indeed he said this, that he was wrong. He has now risen
in people of faith far beyond the confines of one nation. Truly his blood was a
seed of freedom, not only for El Salvador, but for all of us who look to his
example.

To find out more about The Project and their music, please visit their web site.